Robotic Manipulation

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Overview

Robotic manipulation studies how machines use sensing and motion to change objects and environments, from picking and assembly to tool use and handling deformable materials. Approaches combine geometric planning and force or impedance control with imitation learning, reinforcement learning, diffusion policies, and vision-language-action models; world models, memory, tactile feedback, and human-video demonstrations are also used. Methods are tested in simulation and on real robots using suites such as LIBERO, RoboTwin, ManiSkill, and RLBench, across clutter, bimanual coordination, mobile manipulation, and precision contact tasks. A central challenge is turning benchmark performance into safe, reliable long-horizon behavior across new objects, cameras, robot bodies, and real-world dynamics, while limiting data collection and inference costs.

Latest papers

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1,685 papers341 papers in the last four weeks, up 29% on the four weeks before. 2.0% of all new papers.

  1. Build on Priors: Vision--Language--Guided Neuro-Symbolic Imitation Learning for Data-Efficient Real-World Robot Manipulation

    Apr 4, 2026Pierrick Lorang, Johannes Huemer, Timothy Duggan +3Robot Imitation LearningRobotic Manipulation

    Department of Computer Science, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA · Complex Dynamical Systems, Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH (AIT), Vienna, Austria

  2. A Multi-View 3D Telepresence System for XR Robot Teleoperation

    Apr 4, 2026Enes Ulas Dincer, Manuel Zaremski, Alexandra Nick +3Robot TeleoperationVirtual Reality

    Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76137 Karlsruhe, Germany · Institute of Human and Industrial Engineering, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76137 Karlsruhe, Germany

  3. Drift-Based Policy Optimization: Native One-Step Policy Learning for Online Robot Control

    Apr 4, 2026Yuxuan Gao, Yedong Shen, Shiqi Zhang +6Diffusion PolicyRobotic RL

    University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China. · LYNSENSE, Shanghai, China. · iFLYTEK, Hefei 230088, China.

  4. The Compression Gap: Why Discrete Tokenization Limits Vision-Language-Action Model Scaling

    Apr 3, 2026Takuya ShibaVision-Language-Action ModelsInformation Bottleneck

    Shibattic Inc.

  5. Differentiable SpaTiaL: Symbolic Learning and Reasoning with Geometric Temporal Logic for Manipulation Tasks

    Apr 3, 2026Licheng Luo, Kaier Liang, Cristian-Ioan Vasile +1Differentiable LogicSpatiotemporal Reasoning

    UC Riverside · Lehigh University

  6. F2F-AP: Flow-to-Future Asynchronous Policy for Real-time Dynamic Manipulation

    Apr 2, 2026Haoyu Wei, Xiuwei Xu, Ziyang Cheng +5RoboticsRobotic Manipulation

    Department of Automation, Tsinghua University

  7. Learning When to See and When to Feel: Adaptive Vision-Torque Fusion for Contact-Aware Manipulation

    Apr 1, 2026Jiuzhou Lei, Chang Liu, Yu She +2Robotic ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Jiuzhou Lei, Chang Liu, and Minghui Zheng are with the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA. · Yu She is with the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. · Xiao Liang is with the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.

  8. SoftHand Model-W: A 3D-Printed, Anthropomorphic, Underactuated Robot Hand with Integrated Wrist and Carpal Tunnel

    Apr 1, 2026Dhillon B. Merritt, Christopher J. Ford, Haoran Li +4Robotic Hand DesignRobotic Manipulation

    All authors are with the School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology, and Bristol Robotics Laboratory, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1UB, U.K.

  9. Hybrid Framework for Robotic Manipulation: Integrating Reinforcement Learning and Large Language Models

    Mar 31, 2026Md Saad, Sajjad Hussain, Mohd SuhaibRobotic ManipulationLanguage-Conditioned Robot Manipulation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India · School of Architecture, Technology and Engineering, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

  10. DIAL: Decoupling Intent and Action via Latent World Modeling for End-to-End VLA

    Mar 31, 2026Yi Chen, Yuying Ge, Hui Zhou +3Vision-Language-Action ModelsRobotic Manipulation

    The University of Hong Kong · XPENG Robotics · University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  11. Industrial-Grade Robust Robot Vision for Screw Detection and Removal under Uneven Conditions

    Mar 31, 2026Tomoki Ishikura, Genichiro Matsuda, Takuya Kiyokawa +1RoboticsIndustrial Robotics

    Manufacturing Innovation Division, Panasonic Holdings Corporation, 2-7 Matsuba-cho, Kadoma, Osaka, Japan · Department of Systems Innovation, Graduate School of Engineering Science, The University of Osaka, 1-3 Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, Osaka, Japan · Industrial Cyber-physical Systems Research Center, The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 2-3-26 Aomi, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan

  12. Long-Reach Robotic Manipulation for Assembly and Outfitting of Lunar Structures

    Mar 31, 2026Stanley Wang, Venny Kojouharov, Long Yin Chung +2Robotic ManipulationSpace Robotics

    Stanford University · All authors are with the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.

  13. Kilohertz-Safe: A Scalable Framework for Constrained Dexterous Retargeting

    Mar 31, 2026Yinxiao Tian, Ziyi Yang, Zinan Zhao +1Motion RetargetingRobotic Control

    Department of Automation at the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, China, 230026.

  14. FocusVLA: Focused Visual Utilization for Vision-Language-Action Models

    Mar 30, 2026Yichi Zhang, Weihao Yuan, Yizhuo Zhang +2Vision-Language-Action ModelsRobotic Manipulation

    Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China · DaiMon Robotics, China · Nanjing University, Nanjing, China +1

  15. Vision-Based Robotic Disassembly Combined with Real-Time MFA Data Acquisition

    Mar 30, 2026Federico Zocco, Maria Pozzi, Monica MalvezziRobotic ManipulationRobotic Data Collection

    Department of Information Engineering and Mathematics, University of Siena, Italy, Via Roma, 56, 53100.

  16. ManipArena: Comprehensive Real-world Evaluation of Reasoning-Oriented Generalist Robot Manipulation

    Mar 30, 2026Yu Sun, Meng Cao, Yang Ping +24Generalization in Robotic ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

    Sun Yat-sen University · X Square Robot · MBZUAI +2

  17. Tele-Catch: Adaptive Teleoperation for Dexterous Dynamic 3D Object Catching

    Mar 30, 2026Weiguang Zhao, Junting Dong, Rui Zhang +3Robot TeleoperationRobotic Manipulation

    University of Liverpool · Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University · Shanghai AI Lab +2

  18. Off-Axis Compliant RCM Joint with Near-Isotropic Stiffness and Minimal Parasitic Error

    Mar 30, 2026Federico Mariano, Elena De Momi, Giovanni Berselli +3Mechanism DesignSurgical Robotics

    Biomedical Robotics Lab, Department of Advanced Robotics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy. · Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy · DIME, Università di Genova, Genoa, Italy +2

  19. Which Reconstruction Model Should a Robot Use? Routing Image-to-3D Models for Cost-Aware Robotic Manipulation

    Mar 29, 2026Akash Anand, Aditya Agarwal, Leslie Pack Kaelbling3D Mesh ReconstructionRobotic Manipulation

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  20. ProgressVLA: Progress-Guided Diffusion Policy for Vision-Language Robotic Manipulation

    Mar 29, 2026Hongyu Yan, Qiwei Li, Jiaolong Yang +1Robotic ManipulationVision-Language-Action Models

    Peking University · Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA)

  21. Robotic Dexterous Manipulation via Anisotropic Friction Modulation using Passive Rollers

    Mar 29, 2026Ethan Fisk, Taeyoon Lee, Shenli YuanRobotic ManipulationDexterous Manipulation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA · RAI Institute, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA

  22. UMI-Underwater: Learning Underwater Manipulation without Underwater Teleoperation

    Mar 27, 2026Hao Li, Long Yin Chung, Jack Goler +5Affordance-Based Robotic ManipulationRobotic Grasping

    All authors are with Stanford University.

  23. Ruka-v2: Tendon Driven Open-Source Dexterous Hand with Wrist and Abduction for Robot Learning

    Mar 27, 2026Xinqi Lucas Liu, Ruoxi Hu, Alejandro Ojeda Olarte +6Robotic Hand DesignRobotic Manipulation

    New York University Shanghai · New York University

  24. DFM-VLA: Iterative Action Refinement for Robot Manipulation via Discrete Flow Matching

    Mar 27, 2026Jiayi Chen, Wenxuan Song, Jiaxin Fang +12Vision-Language-Action ModelsRobot Learning

    The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) · COCO Matrix · ShanghaiTech University +2

  25. MMaDA-VLA: Large Diffusion Vision-Language-Action Model with Unified Multi-Modal Instruction and Generation

    Mar 26, 2026Yang Liu, Pengxiang Ding, Tengyue Jiang +10Vision-Language-Action ModelsVLA Model Training

    Westlake University Hangzhou, China · Zhejiang University Hangzhou, China · East China University of Science and Technology Shanghai, China +2

  26. Characterization of Constraints in Flexible Unknown Environments

    Mar 25, 2026Samrat Bhattacharyya, Nabil SimaanRobotic ManipulationConstrained Motion Planning

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37212, USA

  27. 3D-Mix for VLA: A Plug-and-Play Module for Integrating VGGT-based 3D Information into Vision-Language-Action Models

    Mar 25, 2026Bin Yu, Shijie Lian, Xiaopeng Lin +8VLMs for RoboticsVision-Language-Action Models

    HIT · ZGCA · HUST +5

  28. A Sensorless, Inherently Compliant Anthropomorphic Musculoskeletal Hand Driven by Electrohydraulic Actuators

    Mar 25, 2026Misato Sonoda, Ronan Hinchet, Amirhossein Kazemipour +2Robotic Hand DesignRobotic Manipulation

    Soft Robotics Lab, ETH Zurich, Switzerland · The University of Tokyo, Japan

  29. Toward Generalist Neural Motion Planners for Robotic Manipulators: Challenges and Opportunities

    Mar 25, 2026Davood Soleymanzadeh, Ivan Lopez-Sanchez, Hao Su +3Motion PlanningRobot Motion Planning

    J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA · Lab of Biomechatronics and Intelligent Robotics, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tandon School of Engineering, New York University, NY, USA · Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, NY, USA +1

  30. Knowledge-Guided Manipulation Using Multi-Task Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 25, 2026Aditya Narendra, Mukhammadrizo Maribjonov, Dmitry Makarov +2Robotic ManipulationMulti-Task Robotic Manipulation

    MIRAI, Moscow, Russia and MBZUAI, Abu Dhabi, UAE · MIRAI, Moscow, Russia and Innopolis University, Russia · MIRAI, Moscow, Russia +1